Interconnections of signals from a PCB to other PCB's has traditionally been accomplished through use of mother board-daughter card technology. This technology utilizes a PCB with a series of parallel PCB connectors mounted on it. There are PCB etched runs or traces on the motherboard that connect the corresponding contacts on every connector. Such connections are referred to as being bussed or bussed together. Other PCBs, called daughter cards (use of card is to distinguish between the mother and the daughter), are plugged into the connectors whereupon each contact position on a daughter card is connected to the corresponding contact position on every other daughter card. Such interconnecting systems are common in computing systems for memory busses, input/output busses, communication signal, or combinations thereof.
Other prior art bussing techniques have used discrete wires or cables of one sort or another. However, each of these techniques adds time and expense, since manual labor is used, and often quality suffers from poor workmanship.
Mother boards are expensive, since the boards must be etched and plated establishing the conductive traces, and then connectors for the daughter cards must be mounted and flow soldered or otherwise connected to the mother board. Another limitation of use of motherboards is that the mother board is of a fixed size and cannot be reduced if fewer numbers of daughter boards are installed. Another limitation is that there is a hidden part of a trace, or a plated through hole, in some embodiments, that runs under the daughter card connectors. When a short circuit or open circuit occurs in such locations it is often difficult to find, and repair is difficult if the connector must be removed. Unsoldering a connector from a mother board can damage it.
An object of this invention is to provide a modular bussed interconnection (hereinafter MBI) system for bussing together the electrical contact signals from daughter cards without use of a motherboard.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a bussed interconnection system for daughter cards where the effect of an adjacent card, being plugged in or not, does not affect the neighboring daughter cards.
It is a another object to provide a bussed interconnection system requiring no soldering.
It is a further object to provide an interconnection system that is flexible so that the number of bussed interconnections can be changed to match the number of daughter cards without compromising the integrity of the interconnection system. A companion object is to provide an interconnection system requiring no tools.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a bussed interconnection system that is low cost and requires a small amount of space.